Security guards tried to stop revellers escaping from a Brazil nightclub as a fire ravaged through the building killing 232 people, it has been claimed.

An eyewitness to the incident, which happened in the early hours of Saturday morning, said door staff initially did not understand what was happening and tried to stop people leaving through an exit door.

It was claimed that bouncers stopped people escaping because they could not prove they had paid their drinks bills.

In what appears to be the deadliest
nightclub fire for a decade, people were reportedly screaming 'there's a
fire' but were trapped inside the burning building.

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Appalling loss of life: Firefighters work to douse a fire at the Kiss Club in Santa Maria city, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, where hundreds of people died

People run to safety and try to rescue others after a massive inferno tore through a Brazil nightclub in the early hours of Saturday morning killing at least 232 people. A man is seen carrying a victim, centre

Up to 2,000 people - mostly students - were in the Kiss nightclub om Santa Maria, southern Brazil, when the fire started.

While
the official cause of the blaze has not been stated, local reports
claim it was sparked by a firework set off during a band's performance.

Witnesses said the club's ceiling, which contained sound insulation foam, caught fire after a pyrotechnic stunt went wrong.

'Five or six people knocked over one security guard and knocked down the door. It was the only exit.

'The first people to get out tried to
pull out whoever was still inside. Hands and arms appeared from the
curtain of smoke. We pulled out various people. I pulled out a girl by
the hair. It was chaos, the worst desperation.'

But other eyewitnesses said that once the security guards realised how serious the fire was, they tried to help people escape.

Aftermath: A view from inside the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria after the blaze

Last night police said that 120 of the 232 dead were men and 112 women. Most were between 16 and 20 years old.

Another 116 people were injured and seven of them were in a critical condition in hospital.

Police warned that the death toll could rise as they continued searching the club for charred bodies.

Dramatic TV footage showed smoke pouring from the nightclub as partygoers joined firemen in trying to break windows and walls with axes and sledgehammers to try to free those still trapped inside.

Firefighters battled to put out the fire which tore through the Kiss Club in Santa Maria, southern Brazil

Emergency services say they feared at least 20 more bodies remained inside the building, and hundreds of others were injured

Others desperately tried to resuscitate their friends on the street outside while some carried horrifically burned victims away in their arms looking for help.

Many family members spent the day outside demanding news of their missing loved ones.

The victims’ bodies were taken to a gymnasium where they were lined up, with their ID documents and mobile phones placed on their chests ready to be officially identified.

Staff told how hundreds of mobile phones have been ringing ‘without stopping’ during the day.

The party had been organised for students of food technology, agriculture, veterinary medicine and agribusiness technology at the University of Santa Maria.

Horrific: A crowd stands outside the Kiss nightclub as the nightmare unfolded

Santa Maria, at the southern tip of
Brazil near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay, is a major
university city with a population of around a quarter of a million.

The fire is believed to have started at around 2.30am and it took firemen three hours to contain it.

Initial reports suggested two champagne glass-shaped props which set off flares had caused the blaze.

But police chief Luiza Souza said
that Marcelo, the Gurizada Fandangueira band’s singer, had said he had a
glove on his hand with ‘a sort of roman candle which sends sparks
flying’.

Mr Souza said: ‘During the show, the band’s producer triggered the glove using a remote control.

'The sparks hit the first layer of
sponge on the ceiling above the stage, and from there the fire spread
quickly to the rest of the club.’

A victim is carried through the street outside the nightclub as emergency crews rush to the scene

Witnesses said the singer tried to put out the fire but the fire extinguisher failed.

Survivor Luana Santos Silva, 23, said
the fire engulfed the venue in seconds. ‘We looked at the ceiling in
front of the stage and it was on fire,’ she said.

‘Immediately we began
to be pushed over. I fell to the floor but my sister grabbed my hand and
dragged me to the exit.

'If it wasn’t for her I’d have been crushed to death.’

Santa Maria’s civil defence
coordinator, Moises Fuchs, said the club’s licence to function had
expired last August. Officials had not renewed it because there was only
one emergency exit.

Partygoers claimed the bouncers had
initially barred them from leaving because they could not prove they had
paid for their drinks.

Rescue: Emergency services filled the street outside the club's entrance as more bodies were pulled from the charred building

Carnage: Locals help evacuate injured victims as clubbers look on in horror following the nightclub fire

They said the bouncers opened the doors after two minutes when they realised what was happening.

The club operated a system where customers are issued with a piece of paper and bar staff tick off what they have drunk.

Customers then pay at the till. Before leaving they have to show the doormen proof they have paid.

Television images showed smoke
pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless, young male partygoers
joined firefighters in wielding axes and sledgehammers, pounding at
windows and walls to break through to those trapped inside.

VIDEO Inside the club. Firefighters battle the suffocating blaze...

Teenagers
sprinted from the scene desperately trying to find help - others
carried injured and burned friends away in their arms.

Michele Pereira, another survivor,
told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage and
that the fire broke out after band members lit flares.

'The band that was on stage began to
use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward.
At that point the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak but in a
matter of seconds it spread,' Pereira said.

Ingrid Goldani, 20, who had been working at the club, said two bands were playing on Saturday night.

She said the fire had begun after a member of one
of the bands lit a flare about 10 minutes into
the show, setting fire to part of the stage.

Overcome: Police, ambulance staff and firefighters helped the victims receive medical assistance in a street outside the Kiss Club

Traumatised: A police officer helps a woman survivor next to the Kiss nightclub in Brazil's Santa Maria

According to her, the fire took hold of the club in less than three minutes.

'The band tried to put out the fire with water, but they didn't manage to,'she said.

'After this, they tried with a fire extinguisher. It was all really quick.'

Club security guard, Rodrigo
Moura, said the venue was at maximum
capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000. He said partygoers were pushing and
shoving to escape.

Ezekiel
Corte Real, 23, was quoted by the paper as saying he helped people to
escape. 'I just got out because I'm very strong,' he said.

Similar: A firefighter inspects a club after a fire in which 194 people died on December 31, 2004 in Buenos Aires

Brazilian
President Dilma Rousseff cancelled her participation in a
regional summit to travel back to Brazil following news of the crisis.

'I
want to say to the people of our country and to the people of Santa
Maria that at this moment of sadness we are together, and necessarily we
will overcome,' said Ms Rousseff told reporters on the sidelines of a
summit of Latin American and European leaders, in Chile.

She was close to tears as she spoke and said that the government was 'mobilising resources' to deal with the tragedy.

'Sad Sunday', tweeted Tarso Genro yesterday, the governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He said all possible action was being taken and that he would be in the city later in the day.

Devastation: Relatives of victims cry in the street after news of the fire is made public

Grief-stricken: As news of the tragic blaze reached hundreds of relatives of the victims, they began to arrive at the scene in complete shock

Tearful: Relatives of the victims of the fire console each other in their grief after more than 230 people were reported dead

As news of the tragedy was made public, relatives of the victims began to appear at the scene.

Hundreds
of shocked and distraught grieving families gathered in the street, but
were kept cordoned off away from the charred Kiss club.

The
fire appeared to be among the world's deadliest in a nightclub since a
2004 fire killed 194 people at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in
Buenos Aires, Argentina.

A
blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out in
December, 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic
ceiling, killing 152.

A nightclub fire in the US state of Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling.

And a welding accident reportedly set off a December 2000, fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.